


Toska

by Canadihipster (Atomograd)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 17:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atomograd/pseuds/Canadihipster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The past is but a ghost of the future, lingering behind and peeking over the shoulder of the present with all intentions of destruction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Toska

_If you were colour blind, wouldn’t this world appear so much more horrifying?_

What felt like pounding waves slammed into him from all sides with all the force of an entire ocean. Something had struck, so suddenly and swiftly, that his barrings were lost with little hope of being regained any time soon. He stumbled, balance escaped him, vision swimming in the black torrent of the assaulting pressure, body slumping back against the nearest wall and eyes widening as he fought to suck in air.

Maybe, all this time, he had been wrong.

 

 

If realisation was anything, it was a fierce being of deviation and disgust, a demon inhabiting one’s flesh, wiring it’s way through nerves and sinew, pulling muscles taunt and rattling bones down to their marrow. It was the chilled shudder that weighed a thousand and a half tons, traveling through the entire body but refusing to break flesh, caught beneath a tarp of skin and using it’s confined space as a play ground.

Regret, that was another interesting feeling. One which hooked fingers and clenched jaws against screams begging to be heaved out of the heavy heart burdened with them. Regret was twining, it wormed itself in from the outside and never quite found itself satisfied, vines laced with thorns catching and tearing, ripping open innocent flesh and exposing it to the infection of itself. It caused the body matter to begin to rot and stick, for decomposition to set in and spread through pain-filled veins, clog up and wisp through hearts struggling to beat as if smoke filling lungs with every desperate inhale.

A combination of both, shaken up and splattered over and dripped from the maws of What-If into a pile of poison laced If-Only was the cocktail which had somehow been slipped down his throat. It inhabited his intestinal tract, spread it’s disease from his most fragile of anatomies and broke him from the inside out.

He was drowning on dry land, pulled under the current of his silent pleas and muffled by the very words he wished to scream loud enough to change time itself.

He was the Sufferer, and he had made a very grave mistake.  
  


 

Head cradled in his hands and nails digging into his scalp, curls falling haphazardly about his long-worn digits, breathless screams and sobs tore their way through his entire body. Blanked out optics shut so tight it hurt, watery red tears built and were too compressed between flesh and flesh to fall without catching a lucky break on the rare occasion. Bent over himself and huddled against the corner of the hive he barely remembered enough of to fully piece together, the deceased troll had finally been diagnosed with an extreme case of a rather crippling condition known not by a single word in his language, nor any other that could possibly span across universes and through and into death for his sake. If such a term existed, the species that spoke it was much too far off to apply it to him, but he was not currently on a search for a dictionary definition of his despair.

He was all alone and the weight of everything suddenly being nothing at all was so painful he could not possibly believe he was truly existing through the entire experience. He had messed up somewhere along the line - A multitude of times. He had taken too many wrong turns and taken the place of a blasphemous figurehead without proper preparation, designated as a scapegoat and it was only after he realised the consequences of his actions did he wish to revert back to the way it had been.

Yet, at the same time, how could he have lived with himself had he not? How could he stand himself if he had let all those trolls whom simply did nothing more than support his words, his beliefs and teachings, rush off to their deaths for his sake? He couldn’t - But that was in the past, nothing he could change and nothing he ever would. It was the choices made afterwards he’d distort, take a different turn in a different town, speak a little louder or quieter to a crowd. The little things that could have truly saved his life and, more importantly, the lives of those he loved, had he only thought his actions better through.

Cursing himself under his breath, tossing his head back the second he could move enough to do so, he let his arms fall. Carefully, the mutant blooded troll allowed his aching eyes to part their lids just enough to blink his horrendously blurred vision into focus to some miniscule amount. Breathing ragged, the waves were quelling themselves about him finally - Or, had he simply been dragged down so far, sunk so low in the ocean, that he escape the raging torrents? Was it that sickness struck and his body had been dumped to attempt and keep those about him safe from such an ill, left for the water to swirl it’s interesting new gift before growing bored, tossing him to the bottom of the water-logged, rhetorical toy chest?

Either way, his entire form was shaking nearly enough to send his blunt teeth into sporadic chatters, fingers curling in the thick wool of his cloak tight enough for his bones to pop quietly, to feel as if threatening to splinter on him. For a brief, dark moment, he mused if such a thing would be better or otherwise. Perhaps, a battered physical form would do well for his tattering mentality. He had never been all there in the first place anyway, had he? Visions of a world not his own, border-line schizophrenic is what he may have called it, had he known such a term. Dreams so vivid he could remember the scent of his companion trolls carrying over in the waking world, hear their words and laughter echoing back into his own. And, not often, was he frightened, no. The Signless had always been enchanted with this world, enraptured with the companionship between all inhabiting it, the mutual peace, the love.

It was a world bursting with muted colour, a place where shade did not mark the man nor place a number on his head. It was a world he strove for, nearly down right fought for on a multitude of occasions.

It was the world that had, inevitably, blinded him with it’s muteness enough to allow him to waltz, laughing, straight into the waiting menace of doom without a single care in all the galaxy.   
It was the world that he was on the verge of cursing, of blaming for all his misguided fuck ups, for stealing his loves, his family.

Wherever it was, even as much as he grew to hate the downfall it had caused him, he still strove for it, still yearned and wished for. Trying to admit an entire race into a new teaching, an entirely new system - it was foolish, especially to believe he could do so through simple spread word before the end of his lifetime. It was the idiotic thought which lead him to the heated shackles, the Psiioniic to the helm, the Dolorosa to her slavery, the Disciple to her solitary madness.

The world which took all he had ever gained away haunted him even in death and, with that secondary epiphany he broke down once more and curled back in on himself, unable to breathe correctly and unable to move himself.

Mistakes had been made, wrong turns had been taken. Dreams had come and danced their way through the waking mind, beautiful fairy tales singing their siren song and leading him by the hand directly down into those horrid depths.

**Author's Note:**

> Re-posted from my Tumblr.


End file.
